Student Internet Quota Information

To support students enrolled in Business & Economics courses with your studies, and to facilitate two way email communications between us, the Faculty provides you with 1 gigabyte internet use per semester. You may monitor your usage via your "my.monash" student portal page. Select “My Info” tab and look for the "Internet usage report" section.

Internet usage is not free. Your faculty pays for internet access as part of student educational programs. However, accessing the internet for non-academic purposes may result in your internet quota being exceeded and further access restricted. It is your responsibility to keep your details secure, as you are accountable for any Internet traffic undertaken on your account. Students may request an ad hoc internet usage report from ITS. Charges apply. Never share your account or write down the details, and remember to frequently change your password.

All users should be familiar with the University's policy on the Acceptable Use of Information Technology Facilities by Students, which clearly states that internet use which is not directly related to your studies is not permitted.

• More information about student internet uasage

Tips To Minimise Usage of Internet Quotas

Normal Internet and email use does not consume excessive bandwidth. However, other activities may. Here are a few tips on ways to avoid wasting your internet quota: Watching online streaming video and listening to online radio (news, music) generate huge amount of download traffic and are very expensive in terms of internet charges. Try to stay away from these applications as much as possible.

Avoid using external email providers like Hotmail or Yahoo. These are usually international sites with lots of active advertising graphics. If you do use Hotmail, don't leave it open on your machine as it is not actually sitting idle and is chewing up the dollars. Just check your mail and shut it down between checks. Close Internet Explorer if not in use (all the open sessions). Most web pages nowadays contain some code that frequently updates either the content or images displayed on your browser. Leaving your browser open would allow continuous download traffic to your computer to update these active web pages.) Where possible, use internet sites within Australia. These can be identified by the 'au' component of their domain names. Example: www.monash.edu.au. Search for local 'mirror sites' first. For example, the popular search engine Google has an Australian mirror site at www.google.com.au and many sites that offer software downloads have local mirrors. The charge for accessing content from outside Australia is three times that for downloading content from within Australia. Some web pages constantly refresh themselves fully or partially after a given time period. Advertising banners frequently behave this way, for example the White Pages and Yellow Pages web pages. Avoid leaving these on your screen for any longer than is necessary. If they are not essential, set your web browser not to display images, or play sound or movie files.

If you wish to send a reference to an external web page via an email, always copy and paste the URL into the email message. This gives the recipient the option of accessing the external site or not. Never include an external web page by right-clicking on the web-page and choosing "send page", as a charge will be incurred whether the recipient wants to read the web page or not.

Our monitoring software allows us to determine who is using large amounts of bandwidth and what type of files they are transferring. It may be useful for you to know that: Comparison of media file size (in kb)

• Microsoft Word file with instructions on how to access email accounts 19 kb
• Image of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center 25 kb
• Photo from the September 2002 issue of Time Magazine 81 kb
• MP3 version of Metallica's hit song "Nothing Else Matters" 5,700 kb
• Episode of "The Simpsons" where Lisa becomes a vegetarian 25,000 kb
• Version of the video game "Tomb Raider" 203,000 kb
• Compressed version of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" 800,000 kb

Think carefully before you choose to download video and audio files. Unauthorised copying or communication of copyright protected material, including music, videos and software violates the law and the University's policies (refer to the IT Information for Students website).